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Science

Whale Shark Tourism Harms Coral Reefs (asianscientist.com) 62

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Scientists in Hong Kong, the Philippines and Guam have found that whale shark tourism in Tan-awan, Oslob, the Philippines, has led to degradation of the local coral reef ecosystem. They reported their findings in Environmental Management. From a report: Oslob, a small municipality on the south coast of Cebu, the Philippines, has become a domestic and international tourism hotspot since 2011, attracting over 300,000 visitors to the village of Tan-awan in 2015. The mass tourism phenomenon is fueled by the year-round presence of whale sharks along the local shallow reef. This unusual aggregation is maintained by the local tourism association feeding the whale sharks with up to 50 tons of shrimps annually.

In this study, scientists from the University of Hong Kong (HKU), the University of Guam, and the Large Marine Vertebrates Research Institute Philippines (LAMAVE) have demonstrated that whale shark tourism has had a detrimental effect on the local reef ecosystem off the coast of Tan-awan. They found that Tan-awan had higher macroalgae and lower coral density, as well as a less diverse coral community dominated by weedy corals and stress-tolerant corals, in comparison to a reference site further south of the coast.

[...] The researchers added that reef degradation in Tan-awan requires immediate attention, given that reef health underpins the ecosystem services afforded to the local communities, including the important tourism sector. As whale shark tourism is projected to grow continuously in the foreseeable future, the research team urges the need for local authorities to implement proper management strategies to mitigate the problems and risks associated with the rapid tourism development.
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Whale Shark Tourism Harms Coral Reefs More

Whale Shark Tourism Harms Coral Reefs

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  • Kill all the whale sharks?
  • I'm not sure, others will have a more informed opinion surely, but it seems from what I read that the problem isn't tourism, it is:

    This unusual aggregation [of whale sharks] is maintained by the local tourism association feeding the whale sharks with up to 50 tons of shrimps annually.

    • Re:"Tourism"? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by LynnwoodRooster ( 966895 ) on Wednesday December 26, 2018 @12:22PM (#57861732) Journal
      The problem is actually poverty. The locals are incredibly poor, and found that having a few whale sharks nearby meant that wealthy Westerners would come and give them lots of money to swim with the whale sharks. So when the choice was to live with a pristine coral reef in abject poverty, or let some damage happen to it but actually earn enough money to send your kids to school and buy some modern conveniences, the locals chose the heartless approach of putting their own lives ahead of the corals.
      • So they should sell the whale sharks to get money?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dfghjk ( 711126 )

        This choice was never made because it doesn't work that way.

        No one is in the position to decide whether damage from tourism is allowable prior to it occurring. The sequence is: (1) people notice the appeal of the area, (2) business develop to support demand, and (3) consequences of the business are felt.

        Odds are, very little benefit to the locals is realized.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          "Allowable?" By who? You sound like the Church leaders of the age of exploration who thought Europe needed to send missionaries and Conquistadors to convert native peoples and tell them how they should live. What business is it of yours?

      • The locals are incredibly poor

        Citation needed. Of course, "incredibly" is subjective anyway. But apparently wealthy enough to start feeding whale sharks 50 tons of shrimps annually. Similar things happen in other places, regardless of the relative poverty of the local residents. But my point was, the paper doesn't specify whether the damage is due to direct human output like trash or boat exhaust, or just the perpetual presence of the whale sharks, it seems to be the latter.

        • Here you go [borgenproject.org]. Twenty one percent live below the poverty line, and that is in a country with a GDP per capita of below $3000 [tradingeconomics.com]. I'd say that is pretty darn low income. And 50 tons of shrimp sounds like a lot - but it's about 275 pounds a day, and that can be caught locally as warm-water shrimp or farmed in a pretty small area [cport.net] of about 5,000 square meters. Hmmm - catch shrimp at night/early morning, feed whale sharks in the day, earn lots of money (around $100 to $200 per tourist per day [tripadvisor.com]), seems like a great

          • In the US ~15% are under the poverty line.

            Guam is 23%. Puerto Rico was 43% (2013-2017)

            When you see low GDP per capita, but also a low poverty rate, it usually means most of the people are successfully living a traditional rural lifestyle, not that they are in abject poverty.

            Damaging the local environment for tourism risks destroying their traditional lifestyle, and generating massive poverty. It also risks urbanizing the poverty and creating deep suffering that lasts generations, and totally erases the loca

            • Being poor in the US is radically different - and much better - than being poor in the Philippines...

              • Please add some kind of content when you reply, don't merely rephrase a tiny subset of what I said.

                If you didn't understand that I said that already, why are you even replying to something where you didn't understand the point?

                • I would rather be below the poverty line in the US (which is how the first 21 years of my life were spent) than below the poverty line in the Philippines. That any better? And yes, I've spent significant time in the Philippines... I guess if you'd rather live with a stream to bathe in, communal pits for toilets, garbage tossed over the back fence, and dirt roads with spotty - at best - utilities, be my guest.

      • The thing is you can use this excuse to explain anything bad people do, especially it is correlated with poverty. Gang Violence, Drugs, Environmental Damage...

        Very few people wake up in the morning and go, I think I will be a negative overall impact on society. However society will often get in the way and force us to make choices for our benefit, because of lack of other good options.

        The biggest problem is the Justice Systems will more likely punish people for breaking laws, vs trying to get them out of t

        • The biggest problem is the Justice Systems will more likely punish people for breaking laws, vs trying to get them out of the catch 22 situations.

          The purpose of the Justice System is punish those who break laws. Sometimes the punishment is harsh, others time you're let off with a warning. Regardless, it is not the responsibility of the Justice System to get people out of their situation. The JS can make recommendations on how to improve the person's life, but it is up to the person to act.

          • Then who is responsible for getting people out of their situation.

            We really don't have any, the Justice System finds the people in desperate situations, then they go an punish them. Who is finding people with these problems and fixing them before there is a problem? No one. We don't have investigators finding people who have slipped threw the cracks and are suffering where some basic services can get them out of their slump.

            Because the Justice System is intent on finding such people, they have the respons

            • , they have the responsibility to help them. It may not be their job, but they own it now.

              No. It is not the responsibility of the JS to do anything for people. Their sole job is, as I said before, to punish people for breaking the law.

              There are a multitude of other groups whose job it is to find people with problems and help them. They are the ones who should be working in coordination with the JS.

              That said, someone like this [pennlive.com] doesn't deserve to get out of their situation. It was all on them.
        • I heard that Bayani in the next village over had some dayuhan pay him 5000 pesos to take them out in his boat and look at the whale sharks! If we could keep our local whale shark population here instead of migrating down the coast, they would pay US rather than them! In two days we would make more than we did all last month! Let's get some food and see if we can encourage the whale sharks to stay here...

        • An excuse and a reason are not the same thing. The GP didn't excuse the practice.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Dang, you beat me to the punch. This is 100% spot-on.

        Having visited the Philippines, I came away with many observations. One of them, after observing local villagers "fishing" with explosives and using nets to scoop up all the floating fish - no minimum size, was this: environmentalism is a luxury of the rich. Struggling people who are trying to feed their family will do whatever it takes, regardless of long-term consequences.

        • No no, I'm being corrected, it's the noble savage who is having the Western ideal of life thrust upon him and taught to ignore/hate the environment...
          /sarc

      • The problem is actually poverty.

        Philipines, yeah probably.
        Guam, not so much. The folks in Guam aren't rich, but its not philipines style poverty either. $30K GDP with a 14% unemployment rate (which isn't great). The key though is its *very* deprendent on tourism, and it has very little political autonomy to set its own broader direction due to being unincorporated American territory, a very double sided sword (Its good to be an American. but its not so good to not have a vote)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      Yes, this is a whale shark equivalent to "feeding stations" which are well known to be unsustainable and are frequently made illegal for just this kind of reason.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ugen ( 93902 )

      I've been there. It's a mass tourism at its worst. Thousands of tourists shuttled by small boats into a semi circle near shore. A small powerboat drags a chum bag behind it, stopping briefly next to each of the parked boats. A few chummed whale sharks obediently follow.
      There is everything there from in-water fist fights for best location, to the usual tourist scams on shore, and of course dumping enormous amounts of trash of all kinds all over the site.
      I did not expect it to be particularly good, but what h

      • All the locals have to live off of whale sharks?
        • You can charge $190 per tourist per whale shark visit. The GDP per capita is under $3000 per year. You do the math. Take 20 trips a year with tourists - or work an average of 300 days. Your choice.
          • I'll take 300 trips a year with tourists and then retire and live near a beach in Cebu and take tourists on trips to see whale sharks in my free time.

    • It is still tourism that is the problem. It just isn't the Tourist who are the problem.

  • This is not a case of tourism being bad. To me the big problem is the artificial feeding of wild whale sharks which keeps the number of visitors so high year round. If there was just a month where a few sharks visited and a few swimmers were in the water, it wouldn't be a big problem.
    • So restrict the whale sharks from visiting except for one month when there are a few swimmers?
  • If feeding shrimps keep the whales around, looks like the Japanese could farm whales. That way wild whales can be saved.

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